Technology
Three tips to improve your XCode4 skills
Help Xcode 4 help you! Work more efficiently with these tips, focusing more on the code and less on the IDE. Tip #1 Use separate tabs for different tasks (editing source, editing nibs, debugging, building, etc). Cmd+T opens a new tab. Each tab will remember its layout, so you can configure it to fit a […]
Training and Using your Brain at CES 2013
After re-acclimating to the unique mixture of highly oxygenated air and cigarette smoke found only in Las Vegas, I joined the melee at the convention center for CES, the largest consumer electronics show on earth. Last year at CES R/GA scouted would-be FuelBand competitors such as the MotoACTV and the Basis health tracker. This year […]
Connected-Devices, Node.js, Arduino, Responsive, NoSQL in a Box, and the ClockPareil
Some experts think connected-devices will increase productivity by several trillion dollars in the coming years. From jet turbines to industrial food processing machines, there are over three million different types of machines that can be controlled and maintained more efficiently with help from the internet. Hoping to learn more, I found time over the vacation to […]
The best hackathon teams combine technology, creativity and strategy
I spent this weekend at Hack // Meat, a hackathon focused on bringing change and innovation to the way meat is currently produced, processed, distributed, sold and consumed. The event brought together over 100 people from almost 10 states, and the 15+ teams worked on a wide range of hacks from scheduling systems to marketing […]
The Family CTO
In the fall of 1987, by advising my father on the purchase of an IBM-compatible machine from PCs Limited, I had unwittingly accepted a lifelong shadow career. From that moment on, I was the Family CTO. Some 25 years later, I now manage a complex infrastructure in five locations. The devices supported went from a […]
When the Navy Master Clock Fails
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”— Segal’s Law (Source: US Naval Observatory Website) R/GA wrote the software that synchronizes the playback of more than a dozen mega-signs in Times Square. Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a big part of what keeps the signs operating in […]
ABC News Realtime Election Results in Times Square
Today, ABC News special “Your Voice, Your Vote 2012” election coverage originates live from election headquarters at the Crossroads of the World. The Pomegranate API, developed in partnership with the R/GA technology group, is being utilized to synchronize and coordinate the enormous digital facade of NASDAQ and the 23 story high Thomson-Reuters sign with live ABC […]
5 Pro MongoDB Data Modeling Tips
We recently challenged ourselves by choosing mongodb for a client project. After a lot of prototypes, tests, wrong approaches, right approaches, lively discussions, and theorizing about the role of NoSQL databases, we decided to move on and face – with responsibility – the challenge. From this amazing experience we developed 5 pro tips that kept […]
Measuring Amazon AWS Uptime
Yesterday, for the second time in two years Techblog was offline most of the day due to an Amazon AWS service outage. That’s effectively, for business purposes, 364/365 = 99.726% uptime. 99.726 percent uptime isn’t a statistic we hear about (returns zero results on Google) because cloud hosting providers shine up the numbers the same way […]
AMD – CommonsJS Modules for the Browser
The Asynchronous Module Definition API (AMD) brings modular JavaScript to the browser similar to the CommonsJS Modules API. The difference with CommonsJS modules is that AMD enables modules to be loaded asynchronously on demand, reducing browser footprint. As with CommonsJS modules, AMD modules do not add variables to the global namespace, helping to avoid clashes between […]
